In 2007 I painted a canvas artwork featuring a male figure wearing a kilt. I was pleased with this original painting but not ready for the reaction it received. The first kilt painting sold almost immediately it arrived in the gallery. Since then, I have continued to paint Kilted figures, both male and female figurative art and sometimes with a dog or cat thrown in as requested! At the time of writing, I hope to develop this theme and continue to do justice to this much loved subject. What may at first just have appeared to be a painting of a “Man In A Kilt” has opened up a whole aea of study for me from the Highland Clearances to the yardage and pleating of a kilt to the geometry of tartan design and Clan culture. These original paintings on canvas now have their own section in the gallery area of the website.
I have had certain "landmark" paintings in my career and this is certainly the most widely known artwork I have created. Everyone wants to know who the model is. He was simply a guy i spoke to online in the days when I surfed the likes of Myspace looking for people who would allow me to paint them. This painting sparked an entire series of Kilt Art paintings.
A kilt painting in oil that has possibly taken longe rto finish than any other which I have painted before. Flower OF Scotland has quite a lot going on in it. Painting the shirt took most of the time and I wanted the tecture of the board to show through slightly in places. The grass only came to be following some experimental landscape painting which took place at the same time as working on this figurative piece.
Following the popularity of "The Answer Is" kilt painting and subsequent Limited Edition Print, I painted a Robert Burns version as a special edition of only 95 (plus 5 artists' proofs). This Kilted gentleman is resplendent in the Burns tartan and is cheekily entitled BUrNS.
As the Kiltie paintings developed, I liked the idea of retaining the humour within them. Having been an owner of a West Highland White Terrier, it was only a matter of time before I included a Westie in one of the paintings.
Tartan Fling was a return to earlier leg painting ideas. I wanted to make a comparison and see if my painting in this niche of leg art had changed much. The main difference was that this artwork was painted in oil as opposed to acrylic and I think it really made a difference to the feel of the finshed piece.
Painted in oil on board, this Kilt painting was much smaller than other such artwork I had produced before. Working smaller scale forces an artist to re-evaluate their painting method entirely: and use different brushes! This artwork featured a model who had appeared in several of my paintings including some of the tarot themed pieces of 2010.
Painting can be a serious business, especially painting figurative art. Every now and again I like to take a more humorous stance and in this painting, featuring a Marilyn Monroe pose on the subject's T-shirt, I had a light hearted approach to the Kiltie series of paintings.
Scot's Pine is an original acrylic painting featuring a male and female figure who appear to be sitting back to back. There are two "moons" in the sky and this symbolises that the figures are actually apart but longing to be together. To date this is the largest figurative painting I have worked on.
When I first began to paint, I became known for painting celebrity art, especially following appearing in two books on th esubject. following this the Kilt Art really caught peoples interest. The Kilt paintings were sometimes quite humorous and were therefore not always taken seriously. "Thistle" was a completely serious oil painting which moved away from the early methods in which the kilt art was painted.
